It's hot outside today, as is always the case in Indiana in July. July is much like January. The season is still relatively new, and yet, I find myself tired of the very qualities I yearned for six months ago -- heat and light. There is nothing that feels new about the season anymore and the delightful changeability of the previous and following months are not present.
In short, it will be July forever. I am bored.
I was noodling about on Google today -- although I should be gardening -- and thought about Nathaniel Hawthorne. You know, of House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter fame. I always connect him with Herman Melville, the man who wrote Moby Dick, largely because they were both from New England.
I like Hawthorne much better. I've never gotten through Moby Dick, though God knows I tried in undergraduate school. Hawthorne's spooky imagination appeals to me far more. I've read a good number of his works voluntarily, but have enjoyed none like "Rappaccini's Daughter," a hauntingly magical, enchanting romance in which the girl in question has been raised in a garden full of poisonous plants, and -- I won't spoil it, but you should read it. It's a longish short story and as darkly magical as anything you will find in Andersen or the Brothers Grimm.
But since "Rappaccini's Daughter" is about gardens, another story by Hawthorne, "The Snow Image," which takes place during an afternoon in winter, is my recommendation today. It's a fairy tale of sorts and while didactic and highly sentimental, its magical elements lend it a early Victorian charm that make reading it a worthwhile on a blistering summer's day.
Snow image by Edward R. Hughes. Garden image by Eugene S. Grasset.
3 comments:
The first picture was so amazing! It was very inspiring.
I'm pretty sure another reason you connect Hawthorne and Melville is because they were really the only two anti-transcendentalist writers of their time. Or at least, that's what I learned in high school.
First of all, let me say that I love Nathaniel Hawthorne. I have not read a Hawthorne story that I have not liked. “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is definitely my favorite short story. It has always reminded me in a way of Snow White. His story “The Birthmark” is also a good one that is like a fairy tale in the sense that the husband is obsessed with beauty. Another one of his short stories I enjoyed was “Wakefield”. It gave me a good laugh; all I could think was “Who does that?”. “The Snow Image” is definitely just classic Nathaniel Hawthorne; it involves a lesson, faith, and a bit of the impossible. He is just a true genius.
Seeing the comment on Transcendentalist made me think of a picture that one of my previous professors showed me and said that it summed up transcendentalism. It is a picture of Emerson’s "transparent eye-ball." Knowing how much you appreciate art work I think you should enjoy it.
Stacey B. T390
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